Oh, now then, you can really spot the influence Daft Punk had on I Feel It Coming right from the start. This is midtempo pop done right and it’s miles better than Starboy… so obviously it’s not as big a hit. Yeah, that’s just typical.

Human’s good, isn’t it? It’s bleak and uplifting at the same time, and that’s a bloomin’ tricky thing to achieve without the whole thing falling apart. Good work, fella.

Matt Terry was the 2016 winner of The X-Factor, which these days means he’ll be next year’s “Who the hell won it last year?… Really? No, I don’t remember him at all.” You can tell ITV have thrown in the towel when it comes to grabbing the Christmas Number One – not only was this song released the week before the big battle, it’s also done as basic as possible. There isn’t even a key-change, for crying out loud. Mr Terry does what he can with the tools he has, but he’s fighting a losing battle here. Next, Louis Tomlinson (formerly of One Direction and Doncaster Rovers) teams up with Steve Aoki to do something you can dance to, which is awfully nice of him after the year we’ve had. Again, it’s no classic, but the two of them have put in a shift on this one so it’d be rude to be ungrateful.

Oh for… I Would Like is another single that threatens to pick up a bit of speed only to decide at the last moment that it really can’t be bothered. If you’re a drummer who’s been hired to play on chart singles this year, I bet you’ve never been paid so much for doing so little. Surely Little Mix can bring the year to a close on a relative high, yeah? Their last single was so good, it’d take a hell of a dip in quality for them to mess things up here… oh, thank God, they don’t mess it up.

Well, that was a quiet year, wasn’t it? Want to know how quiet? Well, 2016 was the first year since 1971 to register fewer than 100 Top Ten singles, and the final tally of 63 is the lowest since 1954’s paltry intake of 61 – not only that, it’s the equal second smallest ever for a calendar year, tied with 1953. I told you the singles chart had slowed down, and it really feels like some idiot’s slammed the emergency brake on. The charts are moving more slowly and even the songs themselves have had a slower tempo to them. It’d be nice if 2017 was an improvement…